It's not a given.
It's an important question that deserves a considered response.
Wanting it to be true and saying it with enough force and conviction just doesn't make it so!
Logic says yes, and anecdotal evidence says yes and no.
I have seen sales actually drop after inappropriate sales training. Note I elected to use the phrase 'inappropriate' rather than 'bad' sales training.
Surprisingly there has been extremely little 'scientific' assessment of whether sales training works.
To do a successful study you would need to first define what is success.
- Is it happier more confident sales people?
- Is it lower staff turnover?
- Is it lower cost of staff management?
- Is it better sales reporting and forecasting?
- Is it an increase in sales?
You would also need to design how you are going to quantify and measure each of the above.
To do the experiment you would need at the minimum three large groups of sales people performing near identical sales roles in the same environment (preferably the same company). The hardest part of doing this study is that you would need to be able to keep all key environmental factors constant in each of the three groups for the duration of the trial. One group would be your 'control group' and the other group would be your group to be 'trained' and a further group would be a 'placebo' group.
- The control group would have no sales training intervention
- The placebo group would get the same amount of interventionist attention as the 'trained group' but would not receive sales training.
- And the Trained group would be subjected to the training to be tested/measured.
I would expect sales to increase slightly in the 'placebo' group and hope to see a marked increase in the 'trained' group.
Neil Rackham the father of 'SPIN selling' measured what works in a sales call/meeting - but he didn't measure if you can train people to do what works in sales meetings.
There is lots of anecdotal evidence by way of reports to suggest sales training works. But you need to examine who is preparing these reports with some skepticism.
As a sales trainer I would like to say it works. However my belief is that a lot of sales training simply does not deliver results for many reasons:
- Training inappropriate to sales mode required (hunter Vs farmer)
- Training in appropriate to environment (retail Vs B2B)
- Training inappropriate to required sales environment style (relationship Vs Feature Vs consultative)
Even when you acknowledge that you can train people to do the right things to achieve the desired results they can also be very quickly de-trained by their work place environments, support structures, bonus and commission schemes, etc.
For this reason it's important that the workplace environment is evaluated/adapted to support the sales processes/methodologies taught – this is a key reason why it is imperative that sales managers also attend the same sales training as their staff.
For further discussion on this topic visit the The B2B Sales Professional's Forum
by
Liam Venter: Author of the popular sales training manual
'The
Consultative Sales Professional'
You can obtain a copy here
Comments